He is co-founder of American Academy of Indic Studies (www.AAIndicStudies.org) and is the editor of the Encyclopedia of Hinduism (Springer).

He is Associate Professor in the department of Philosophy & Religion. He has published articles in journals such as Religious Studies Review, Worldviews, Religion Compass, Journal of Vaishnava Studies, Union Seminary Quarterly Review, and the Journal of Visual Anthropology. He also contributes to the Huffington Post, Washington Post’s forum On Faith, and Patheos.His research has been supported by the Fulbright fellowship and by the Wenner Gren grant. His teaching interests include Religion and Ecology, Indian films, and Religions and Cultures of South Asia and South Asian Diaspora in North America. Before joining UNT, he taught at North Carolina State University, Rutgers, Kean, and New Jersey City University. Interested in connecting ancient practices with contemporary issues, he is exploring the connections between religious traditions and sustainability in Hindu and Jain communities in India and the Indian diaspora. He serves as a research affiliate with Harvard University’s Pluralism Project, as scholar-in-residence with GreenFaith, as a board member of the Society for Hindu Christian Studies, and as a board member of the Executive Advisory Council of Hindu American Seva Charities, an NGO working with the White House Office for the faith-based initiatives. He has presented his research at Columbia University, University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, University of South Florida, Florida International University, University of Toledo, Texas Christian University, High Point University, Lancaster University (UK), Andhra University (India), Univ of Rajasthan (India), and several conferences, high schools, radio and TV stations, temples, churches, Yoga centers, and other community centers.He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa and an M.A. from Columbia University (both in Religious Studies). In his “previous life” he had also earned a B.S. in Computer Science from India and had worked as a software engineer in India and in New Jersey. Dr. Jain is an active member of several academic and community organizations, is fluent in several Indian languages, and has published poems in Hindi. He was born in Rajasthan and had also lived in Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Karnatak (in India) and in New Jersey, Iowa, North Carolina, and Texas (in the USA). Some of his papers and articles are at:http://unt.academia.edu/PankajJain/Papers and videos are at http://www.youtube.com/pj2017. The Facebook page for his book is at:https://www.facebook.com/DharmaAndEcology

Monday, April 27, 2009

Is the Indus script indeed not a writing system? By Asko Parpola

Is the Indus script indeed not a writing system? By Asko Parpola

Is the Indus script a writing system or not? I represent the traditional viewthat it is, and more accurately, a logo-syllabic writing system of theSumerian type. This paper is an enlarged version of the criticism that Ipresented two years earlier in Tokyo, where it was published soonafterwards (Parpola 2005). What I am criticizing is "The collapse of theIndus script thesis: The myth of a literate Harappan Civilization" by SteveFarmer, Richard Sproat and Michael Witzel (2004), where the authorscategorically deny that the Indus script is a speech-encoding writingsystem.Farmer and his colleagues present ten main points or theses, whichaccording to them prove that the Indus script is not writing:1. Statistics of Indus sign frequencies & repetitions2. ―Texts‖too short to encode messages3. Too many rare signs, especially ―singletons‖4. No sign repetition within any one text5. ―Lost‖longer texts (manuscripts) never existed6. No cursive variant of the script developed, hence no scribes7. No writing equipment has been found8. ―Script‖signs are non-linguistic symbols9. Writing was known, but it was consciously not adopted10. This new thesis helps to understand the Indus Civilization better thanthe writing hypothesis.I shall take these points up for discussion one by one.Statistics of Indus sign frequencies & repetitionsFirstly, Farmer and his colleagues claim that comparison of the Indus signfrequencies ―can show that the Indus system could not have been aChinese-style script, since symbol frequencies in the two systems differtoo widely, and the total numbers of Indus symbols are too few‖ (Farmer& al. 2004: 29). They also point out that signs are repeated within a singleinscription much more often in Egyptian cartouches than in Indus seals ofa similar length.112 AirāvatiThere is no difficulty to agree with these observations. There is a vastdifference between the Chinese script with its theoretically nearly 50,000signs (and even in practice about 5000 signs) and the Indus script withonly about 400 known graphemes.―But [as Farmer and his colleagues themselves conclude,] studies ofgeneral sign frequencies by themselves cannot determine whether theIndus system was a ‗mixed‘ linguistic script [that is, a logo-syllabic scriptof the Sumerian type]... or exclusively a system of nonlinguistic signs‖(Farmer & al. 2004: 29).As this is an important point, my colleague Dr Kimmo Koskenniemi, whois Professor of Computer Linguistics at the University of Helsinki,verified from Dr Richard Sproat by e-mail in April 2005 that they bothagree on the following: ―Plain statistical tests such as the distribution ofsign frequencies and plain reoccurrencies can (a) neither prove that thesigns represent writing, (b) nor prove that the signs do not representwriting. Falsifying being equally impossible as proving.‖Rebuses were used very much from the earliest examples of the Egyptianwriting. Around 3050 BC, the name of King Narmer was written with thehieroglyphs depicting ‗catfish‘ (the Egyptian word for 'catfish is n'r) and‗awl‘ (the Egyptian word for 'awl' is mr). (cf. Gardiner 1957: 7). Egyptianrebus-punning ignored wovels altogether, but the consonants had to beidentical (cf. Gardiner 1957: 9). Other early logo-syllabic scripts too,allowed moderate liberties, such as difference in vowel and consonantlength. The Egyptian words represented by the hieroglyphs could containthree or two consonants or just one (cf. Gardiner 1957: 25). Eventuallyonly the one-consonant signs were selected by the Egyptian-trainedSemitic scribes for writing their own language, but they were usedcopiously also in Egyptian-language texts, and not only for writingforeign proper names. This easily explains the difference in the statisticsbetween Egyptian cartouches and Indus seal inscriptions.―Texts‖ too short to encode messagesThe second argument of Farmer and his colleagues is that ―Indusinscriptions were neither able nor intended to encode detailed ‗essages‘,not even in the approximate ways performed by formal mnemonicsystems in other nonliterate societies‖ (Farmer et al. 2004: 42). One of thetwo reasons adduced in support of this thesis is that the Indus inscriptionsare too short.Parpola, Asko 113But although the Indus texts have as their average length five signs, this isquite sufficient to express short noun phrases in a logo-syllabic script ofthe Sumerian type. We cannot expect complete sentences in seals andother types of objects preserved (cf. Parpola 1994: 87). But even writtennoun phrases qualify as language-based script — I shall return to thispoint later.The Mesopotamian seal inscriptions typically contain: a proper name ±descent ± occupation (cf. e.g. Edzard 1968). In the most elaborate seals ofthe high officials, this information is couched in an invocation addressedto the King or other dignitary. Here are two examples of Mesopotamianseal inscriptions: ―Adda the Scribe‖ ―O Sharkali- sharri, King of Akkad:Ibni-sharri the Scribe (is) your servant‖. These Akkadian seals arecontemporary with the heyday of the Indus Civilization, and the latter onein fact attests to contacts with it. The water-buffalo depicted in it wasimported to Mesopotamia from the Indus Valley during the rule of Sargonthe Great, King of Akkad (2334-2278 BC) and entered Mesopotamianiconography towards the end of his 60 year long rule, to disappear fromthe iconography and the faunal remains in the beginning of the secondmillennium BC when the Indus Civilization collapsed (Cf. Boehmer1975).Not all Indus texts 2 are so short — for instance the one-line sealinscription M-355 from Mohenjo-daro has 14 signs. But even a singlesign of a logo-syllabic script can convey a message. The single-sign sealinscription H-94 from Harappa probably renders the occupational title ofthe seal owner. Single-sign texts may consist of non-composite signs, buthere this single sign is a composite sign consisting of two componentsigns. Many composite signs (like the one in the text H-94) have ‗man‘ asthe final component and may denote occupational titles such as ‗oliceman‘or ‗ilk-man‘. Partially identical sequences show a functionalcorrespondence between compound signs and their component signs (cf.Parpola 1994: 80-81 with fig. 5.3). The Egyptian script around 3000 BCwas used in a number of inscriptions, most of which were very short,often consisting of just two or three signs. They recorded proper nameswith a high percentage of rebus signs and thus qualify as writing.Too many rare signs, especially ―singletons‖The third argument of Farmer and his colleagues has been put into wordsas follows: ―Further evidence that clashes with the Indus-script thesisshows up in the large number of unique symbols (or ‗singletons‘) andother rare signs that turn up in the inscriptions ... A number of inscriptions114 Airāvatialso contain more than one singleton in addition to other rare signs,making it difficult to imagine how those signs could have possiblyfunctioned in a widely disseminated ‗script‘‖(Farmer & al. 2004: 36).It is true that around 25% of the about 400 graphemes of the Indus scriptare attested only once (cf. Mahadevan 1977: 17; Parpola 1994: 78, table5.1).But if more texts are excavated, many of these ‗singletons‘ will occurmore than once; there will also be new rare signs. Many of the Indus‗singletons‘ occur in the midst of more frequently occurring signs, whichhelps their understanding. All logo-syllabic scripts had rarely occurringsigns, some of these scripts quite many. Chinese has very many rare signs,and some of them do occasionally occur even in newspapers.No "random-looking" sign repetitions within any one textAlthough Farmer and his colleagues in passing refer to logosyllabicwriting systems of the Sumerian type and their functioning, theirargumentation implies that in order to represent a language-based scriptthe Indus signs should largely be phoneticized in the manner of theEgyptian cartouches. However, in early logosyllabic scripts one signoften stands for a complete word. Even a seal with a single sign canexpress its owner, and there is mostly little reason for sign repetition inshort seal texts written in an early logosyllabic script of the Sumerian type.The alleged lack of what they call random-looking type of sign repetitionis mentioned as the fourth and most important and critical evidenceagainst the thesis that the Indus script is a writing system: ―Mostimportantly, nowhere in Indus inscriptions do we find convincingevidence of the random-looking types of sign repetition expected incontemporary phonetic or semi-phonetic scripts‖ (Farmer & al. 2004: 29-30).Farmer and his colleagues themselves admit that ―some Indus signs dorepeat in single inscriptions, sometimes including many repetions in arow‖ (p. 31). However, they do not accept the evidence of suchduplications: ―Whatever the origins of these different types ofduplications, all that is critical for our purposes is to note again the lack ofany suggestions in them of the random-looking repetitions typical even ofmonumental scripts like Luwian or Egyptian hieroglyphs‖ (p. 36).The hieroglyphic signs drawn in black in fig. 1 mark the repetitions in thecartouches of Ptolemy and Cleopatra; they were crucial in theParpola, Asko 115decipherment of the Egyptian script. But these are the repetitions whenboth of the two cartouches are taken into consideration. Farmer and hiscolleagues speak of sign repetitions limited to single cartouches, in whichcase Ptolemy‘s cartouche has only one sign repetition, namely theduplication of the sign E, one after the other in a row, which according toFarmer & al. does not count as a "random-looking" repetition. WithinCleopatra‘s cartouche, there is likewise only one sign repetition, namelythat of the eagle-shaped sign for A. This latter case would qualify as anexample of a ―random-looking‖ sign repetition.Fig. 1 : Cartouches of Ptolemy and Cleopatra: the Egyptian hieroglyphs and theirtransliterations (with repetitions shown in bold). (After Parpola 1994: 41, fig. 3.1.)But sign repetition within single Indus inscription DOES occur, also ofthe ―random-looking type" completely missed by Farmer and hiscolleagues. Such repetition occurs even in the ―bar-seals‖, which Farmerand his colleagues (2004: 33) consider particularly crucial for the Indusscript thesis. The following counter examples by no means exhaust thematerial.In the 10-sign text M-682 from Mohenjo-daro, one sign is repeated threetimes, two other signs are repeated twice, and all in different places, thatis, not in a row.In M-634 from Mohenjo-daro one sign is repeated in three differentplaces. Farmer and his colleagues have noticed this case, but disqualify itbecause in their opinion the ―sun symbol‖shows that non-linguisticsymbols are involved. Of course this sign can very well depict the solarwheel with rays, as I have myself proposed on the basis of Near Easternand later Indian parallels (cf. Parpola 1994: 104, 106 fig. 7.5; 110; 116-116 Airāvati117). But, how do Farmer and his colleagues know that this sign has notbeen used phonetically as a rebus sign: after all, it is precisely this type of―random repetition‖that they consider as proof for phonetic usage!In M-1792 (Marshall 1931: III, pl. 106 no. 93) from Mohenjo-daro onesign (different from that of M-634) is also repeated in three differentplaces.The seal K-10 from Kalibangan has ten signs. One and the same two-signsequence is repeated in two different places.In the 11-sign text M-1169 from Mohenjo-daro, one sign is repeated intwo different places.In the 8-sign "bar-seal" M-357 from Mohenjo-daro, one sign is repeatedin two different places.I agree with Farmer and his colleagues that some of the sign duplicationsin row imply quantification (cf. Farmer & al. 2004: 31). I shall come backto the probable function of the small bifacial tablets later on. Theinscription on one side of them usually has just the U-shaped sign,preceded by one to four vertical strokes for the numbers 1 to 4: UI, UII,UIII, UIIII. In some tablets, such as H-764 from Harappa, the U-shapedsign is repeated three times: UUU, obviously an alternative to UIII, whereIII = number 3 is a numeral attribute (cf. Parpola 1994: 81). Farmer andhis colleagues want to deny the use of number signs as numeral attributesof following signs; according to them they are independent symbols forfixed conceptions: thus seven strokes should denote ―THE seven‖However, different numbers clearly alternate before certain signs, amongthem the U-shaped sign, clearly suggesting attributive use (cf. Parpola1994: 81-82; 88; 120, fig. 7.21, I).Farmer and his colleagues (2004: 31) surmise that the duplication of othersigns may emphasize their magical or political power. They do notmention that such sign reduplications can reflect emphasizing linguisticreduplications common in Dravidian (and other Indian languages)especially in onomatopoeic words, or as grammatical markers, such asSumerian nominal plurals (cf. Parpola 1994: 82). There are also cases likethe reduplication of the sign ―dot-in-a-circle‘ that could depict the ‗ye‘.Comparing the Dravidian words kaN ‗eye‘ and ka:N ‗to see‘, I haveproposed reading their reduplication as a compound word, namely kaNka:Ni attested in Tamil in the meaning ‗overseer‘, a meaning that wouldParpola, Asko 117suit very well for instance its occurrence on an ancient seal-impression ona potsherd from Mohenjo-daro (M-1382) (cf. Parpola 1994: 215; 275)."Lost" longer texts (manuscripts) never existedAll literary civilizations produced longer texts but there are none from theIndus Valley — hence the Indus ―script‖is no writing system: Farmer andhis colleagues reject the much repeated early assumption that longer textsmay have been written on ―birch bark, palm leaves, parchment, wood, orcotton cloth, any of which would have perished in the course of ages‖assuggested by Sir John Marshall in 1931 (I, 39). Farmer and his colleaguesare ready to believe the ―Indus script thesis‖only if an Indus text at least50 signs long is found.But even though Farmer and his colleagues speak as if our present corpusof texts was everything there ever existed, this is not the case. More than2100 Indus texts come from Mohenjo-daro alone, and yet less than onetenth of that single city has been excavated. Farmer and his colleagues donot know what has existed and what may be found in the remaining partsof the city, even if it is likely that only imperishable material of the kindsalready available continue to be found. The Rongo-Rongo tablets ofEaster Island are much longer than 50 signs. But does this make it certainthat they represent writing in the strict sense?Seed evidence shows that cotton has been cultivated in Greater IndusValley since Chalcolithic times, and cotton cloth is supposed to have beenone of the main export item of the Harappans. Yet all the millions ofHarappan pieces of cotton cloth have disappeared for climatic reasons,save four cases where a few microscopic fibers have been preserved inassociation with metal (cf. Possehl 2002: table 3.2, with furtherreferences). Alexander‘s admiral Nearchus mentions ―thickly wovencloth‖used for writing letters in the Indus Valley c 325 BC. Sanskritsources such as the Ya:jñavalkya-Smrti (1,319) also mention cotton cloth,(ka:rpa:sa-)paTa, as writing material around the beginning of theChristian era. But the earliest preserved examples date from the 13thcentury AD (cf. Shivaganesha Murthy 1996: 45-46; Salomon 1998: 132).Emperor Asoka had long inscriptions carved on stone (pillars and rocks)all around his wide realm in 260 to 250 BC. They have survived. But alsomanuscripts on perishable materials must have existed in Asoka‘s timesand already since the Achaemenid rule started in the Indus Valley c 520BC. This is suggested among other things by the mention of lipi ‗script‘in Pa:Nini‘s Sanskrit Grammar (3,2,21) which is dated to around 400-350118 AirāvatiBC. Sanskrit lipi comes from Old Persian dipi ‗script‘. The earliestsurviving manuscripts on birch bark, palm leaves and wooden blocks datefrom the 2nd century AD and come from the dry climate of Central Asia(cf. Shivaganesha Murthy 1996: 24-36; Salomon 1998: 131). We canconclude that manuscripts on perishable materials have almost certainlyexisted in South Asia during 600 years from the start of the Persian ruleonwards, but they have not been preserved; this period of 600 years withno surviving manuscripts corresponds to the duration of the IndusCivilization.No cursive variant of the Indus script developed — hence no scribesThe sixth argument of Farmer and his colleagues is based on theobservation that everywhere scribes writing manuscripts tended todevelop a cursive style. From the fact that the Indus script changed verylittle during its 600 years of existence they conclude that there were nolonger texts nor any scribes.But the Egyptian hieroglyphs preserved their monumental pictographicshapes for 3000 years.The Egyptian cursive hieratic style of papyrusmanuscripts does not differ so very much from the monumentalhieroglyphs. The difference between Maya manuscripts and monumentalinscriptions is not all that great, either.Actually there is quite a lot of graphic variation in the Indus signs (see thesign list in Parpola 1994: 70-78, fig. 5.1), and in my opinion this variationprovides also an important key to their pictorial or iconic understanding.On the other hand, the Indus script emerges in the Mature Harappanperiod already more or less fully standardized, and by this time a lot ofshape simplification or creation of a more cursive script had already takenplace.No writing equipment has been foundNo writing equipment has been found, hence Farmer and his colleaguesconclude that there were no scribes nor any manuscripts. Fourarchaeologists specializing on the Indus Civilization have interpretedsome finds as writing equipment, but their suggestions ―are no longeraccepted by any active researchers‖(Farmer et al. 2004: 25).But thin metal rods, such as used in South India to incise palm leafmanuscripts, could have early on corroded away or beyond recognition.From painted Indus texts on Harappan pots (e.g. Sktd-3 from SurkotadaParpola, Asko 119in CISI 1: p. 392) and bangles (cf. Blk-6 from Balakot in CISI 2: p. 432)we know that Indus people used brushes to write, although such brusheshave not survived or have not been recognized — and in North Indiapalm leaf manuscripts have been painted with brushes. For the record,some of the provisional identifications for Harappan writing equipment(Mackay 1938; Dales 1967; Konishi 1987; Lal 2002) were publishedfairly recently, and two of these scholars are still themselves "activeresearchers".The Indus "script" signs are actually non-linguistic symbolsInstead of a language-based writing system, Farmer and his colleagues(2004: 45) see in the Indus signs ―a relatively simple system of religiouspoliticalsigns that could be interpreted in any language‖ The nonlinguisticsymbols of Mesopotamian iconography are said to be aparticularly close and relevant parallel, as they may be arranged in regularrows with a definite order like the Indus signs.But in Mesopotamian seal iconography, the non-linguistic symbolsusually occur as isolated signs, for instance near the gods they belong to.Arranged in longer rows and with a definite order they occur only in verylimited contexts: mainly on stelae and boundary stones (kudurru) between1600 and 600 BC. Mesopotamia was a literate civilization, and thesymbols on the boundary stones followed the order of divinities in curseformulae written down in cuneiform texts — the symbols representeddeities invoked to protect the boundary stone (cf. Black & Green 1992:15-16; 113-114).Writing was known to the Indus people from Mesopotamia, but it wasconsciously not adoptedFinally, Farmer and his colleagues ask themselves: ―The critical questionremains of why the Harappans never adopted writing, since their tradeclasses and presumably their ruling elite were undoubtedly aware of itthrough their centuries of contact with the high-literate Mesopotamians‖(Farmer et al. 2004: 44). Their answer is that the Harappans intentionallyrejected writing for some such reason as the Celtic priests of Romantimes: for the druids were averse to encode their ritual traditions inwriting like the Vedic Brahmins of India (ibid.).But it is not likely that the Harappans would have rejected writing forsuch a reason because: adopting writing did not oblige them to divulgetheir secret texts, which could be guarded in an esoteric oral tradition. In120 Airāvatiany case literacy must have been fairly restricted. Even in Mesopotamialiterary texts were written down only long after the invention of writing.It is true that some complex societies did prosper without writing — theIncan empire for example used instead a complex communication systemof knotted strings. But writing does offer advantages not easily discarded.We can indeed ask a counter question: Why was the Indus script created?In my opinion for economic and administrative reasons, like the ArchaicSumerian script. This is strongly suggested by the fact that the majority ofthe surviving texts are seal stamps and seal impressions quite clearly usedin trade and administration (cf. Parpola 1994: 113-116). But properjudgement requires acquaintance with the evolution of the IndusCivilization. (The following short overview is mainly based on Possehl2002).The Indus Civilization came into being as the culmination of a longcultural evolution in the Indo-Iranian borderlands. From the verybeginning, this was the eastern frontier of a large cultural area which hadMesopotamia as its core pulsating influence in all directions. In WesternAsia, the domestication of animals and plants started by 8000 BC. Thisrevolution in food production reached the mountain valleys of westernPakistan by 7000 BC. From the Neolithic stage, about 7000-4300 BC,some twenty relatively small villages are known, practically all inhighland valleys. People raised cattle, sheep and goats. They cultivatedwheat and barley, and stored it in granaries. Pottery was handmade, andhuman and bovine figurines reflect fertility cults. Ornaments reflectsmall-scale local trade.During the Chalcolithic phase, about 4300-3200 BC, the village size grewto dozens of hectares. Settlements spread eastwards beyond the Indus upthe ancient Sarasvati river in India, apparently with seasonal migrations.Copper tools were made, and pottery became wheel-thrown andbeautifully painted. Ceramic similarities with southern Turkmenistan andnorthern Iran also suggest considerable mobility and trade.In the Early Harappan period, about 3200-2500 BC, many new sites cameinto existance, also in the Indus Valley, which was a challengingenvironment on account of the yearly floods, while the silt made thefields very fertile. Communal granaries disappeared, and large storagejars appeared in house units. Potter‘s marks suggest private ownership,and stamp seals bearing geometrical motifs point to development inadministration. Irrigation canals were constructed, and advances weremade in all crafts. Mastery of air reduction in burning enabled makingParpola, Asko 121high quality luxury ceramics. Similarities in pottery, seals, figurines,ornaments etc. document intensive caravan trade with Central Asia andthe Iranian plateau, including Shahr-i Sokhta in Seistan, where someProto-Elamite accounting tablets have been discovered. There werealready towns with walls and a grid pattern of streets, such as RahmanDheri. Terracotta models of bullock carts attest to improved transport inthe Indus Valley, which led to considerable cultural uniformity over awide area, especially where the Kot Diji style pottery was distributed.The relatively short Kot Diji phase between 2800 and 2500 BC turned theEarly Harappan culture into the Mature Indus Civilization. During thisphase the Indus script came into being, as the recent Americanexcavations at Harappa have shown. Unfortunately we still have only fewspecimens of the early Indus script from this formative phase (see CISI 3:pp. 211-230). At the same time, many other developments took place. Forinstance, the size of the burned brick, already standardized during theEarly Harappan period, was fixed in the ratio 1:2:4 most effective forbonding.During the Indus Civilization or Mature Harappan phase, from about2500 to 1900 BC, the more or less fully standardized Indus script was inuse at all major sites. Even such a small site as Kanmer in Kutch, Gujarat,measuring only 115 x 105 m, produced during the first season ofexcavation in 2005-2006 one clay tag with a seal impression and threecarefully polished weights of agate (Kharakwal et al. 2006: figs. 11-12).During the transition from Early to Mature Harappan, weights andmeasures were standardized, another very important administrativemeasure suggesting that economic transactions were effectivelycontrolled. Weights of carefully cut and polished stone cubes form acombined binary and decimal system. The ratios are 1/16, 1/8, 1/6, 1/4,1/2, 1 (= 13 g), 2, 4, 8, 16, ... 800.By about 2500 BC, the Harappan society had become so effectivelyorganized that it was able to complete enormous projects, like buildingthe city of Mohenjo-daro. The lower city of at least 80 hectares hadstreets oriented according to the cardinal directions and provided with anetwork of covered drains. Many of the usually two-storied houses werespacious and had bathrooms and wells. The water-engineering ofMohenjo-daro is unparallelled in the ancient world: the city had some 700wells constructed with tapering bricks so strong that they have notcollapsed in 5000 years. Development of water traffic made it possible totransport heavy loads along the rivers, and to start direct trade with the122 AirāvatiGulf and Mesopotamia. Over thirty Indus seals and other materials ofHarappan origin, such as stained carnelian beads, have been found inWestern Asia.That the numerous Indus seals were used to control trade and economy iscertified by the preservation of ancient seal impressions on clay tags thatwere once attached to bales of goods and otherwise to safeguard property.There are impressions of clothing and knotted strings on the reverse ofthese clay tags, such as the one found at Umma in Mesopotamia (cf.Parpola 1994: fig. 7.16). Almost one hundred such clay tags come fromthe port town of Lothal on the coast of Gujarat (see CISI 1: pp. 268-289).A warehouse had burned down and therewith baked and preserved thesetags. Many of them bear multiple seal impressions, some involving fourdifferent seals, as does the clay tag K-89 from another site, Kalibangan.The practice suggests the use of witnesses. Such bureaucratic proceduresimply keeping records comparable to the economic tablets ofMesopotamia. Registers and other official documents — the kind oflonger texts that I miss — are likely to have been written on palm leaves,cotton cloth or other perishable material that has not survived for climaticreasons.I spoke earlier of sign duplications that imply quantification. The smallbifacial tablets mainly known from Harappa had some economic andritual function. At the right end of the tablet M-478 from Mohenjo-daro(cf. CISI 1: p. 115 & Parpola 1994: 109 fig. 7.12), we see a worshipperkneeling in front of a tree, undoubtedly sacred, and extending towards thetree what looks like a pot of offerings shown in profile. Theaccompanying inscription, read from right to left, begins with a U-shapedsign similar to the assumed pot of offerings, preceded by four strokes thatrepresent number four. One side of most tablets from Harappa usually hasnothing but this pot-sign, preceded by one to four vertical strokes for thenumbers 1 to 4. In some cases, as in the tablet H-247, the pot-sign is heldby a kneeling worshipper, as in the scene of the tablet M-478. In Harappa,many identical tablets have been found in one and the same location.They may have been distributed by priests to people who brought a givenamount of offerings, either as receipts that dues had been paid to thetemple, or as protective amulets in exchange of offerings. In either case,the priests probably kept some kind of log of the transactions. In a SouthIndian village where I have done field work (Panjal in Kerala), I havewitnessed how each house brings one or more vessels full of paddy to thelocal shrine at festivals, to be managed for common good by templepriests.Parpola, Asko 123Conclusion: Is the Indus script writing or not?So is the Indus script writing or not? We have seen that all evidenceadduced by Farmer and his colleagues is inconclusive: none of it canprove their thesis that the Indus script is not writing but only nonlinguisticsymbols, "a relatively simple system of religious-political signsthat could be interpreted in any language‖ (Farmer & al. 2004: 45).The question requires the consideration of some further issues. One ofthese is the fact that non-linguistic symbol systems (―potter‘s marks‖andiconographic symbols) existed as early as since 3300 BC not only innorthern Indus Valley but also in Baluchistan, Seistan & Kerman on theIranian Plateau and in southern Turkmenistan, a circumstance notmentioned by Farmer and his colleagues (cf. Vidale 2007).In contrast to these relatively simple systems of non-linguistic pot-marks,the Indus script has a great number of different signs, around 400, andthey have been highly standardized. Moreover, the signs are usuallyneatly written in lines, as is usual in language-bound scripts. The normaldirection of writing is from right to left; this is the direction of theimpressions made with seal stamps, which were carved in mirror image.Occasionally the seal-carver ran out of space, and in such cases hecramped the signs at the end of the line to preserve the linear order. Forinstance in the seal M-66 from Mohenjo-daro, the single sign of thesecond line is placed immediately below the space which had proved toosmall. The three last signs thus have the same sequence as the last threesigns in the seal M-12 from Mohenjo-daro.But the most important characteristic of the Indus texts from the point ofview of speech-encoding becomes evident if we do not limit theobservation of sign repetition to single inscriptions as Farmer and hiscolleagues do. The fact is that the Indus signs form a very large numberof regularly repeated sequences. The above discussed sequence of thethree last signs in the seals M-66 and M-12 occurs in Indus inscriptionsabout 100 times, mostly at the end of the text. The order of these threesigns is always the same, and this sequence is recorded from ninedifferent sites, including two outside South Asia, one in Turkmenistanand one in Iraq (see fig. 2). If the Indus signs are just non-linguisticsymbols as Farmer and his colleagues maintain, for what reason are theyalways written in a definite order, and how did the Indus people in somany different places know in which order the symbols had to be written?Did they keep separate lists to check the order? And one should note thatthere are hundreds of regular sequences that occur several times in the124 Airāvatitexts. The text of eleven signs written on top of fig. 2 (attested in severalidentical tablets from Harappa: H-279 through H-284, see CISI 1: p. 222-223; and H-871 through H-873, see CISI 2: p. 335) can be broken intosmaller sequences all of which recur at several sites (see fig. 2). As thissmall example shows, the texts even otherwise have a regular structuresimilar to linguistic phrases. The Indus signs do not occur haphazardlybut follow strict rules. Some signs are usually limited to the end of thetext, and even when such a sign occurs in the middle of an inscription, itusually ends a recurring sequence. Some other signs are limited to thebeginning of the text, but may under certain conditions appear also inother positions. And so forth. (See Parpola 1994: 86-101).Fig. 2 : Indus signs occur in strictly ordered sequences that recur at many different sites.Table compiled by AP for this paperThe unrelated graffiti scratched on pots at the Megalithic site of Sanur inSouth India (see fig. 3) offer a contrasting example. Three signs occurmany times together, but their order varies. It does not matter in whichorder they are placed. This is what one normally expects from nonlinguisticsymbols. I do not believe that these Megalithic graffiti representreal writing in the sense of speech-encoding, but are non-linguisticsymbols.Parpola, Asko 125The Indus sign sequences are uniform all over the Harappan realm inSouth Asia, suggesting that a single language was used in writing. Bycontrast, both native Harappan and non-Harappan sign sequences occuron Indus seals from the Near East, the sequences usually being inharmony with the shape of the seal: square seals are typical of South Asia,round seals are typical of the Gulf and cylinder seals are typical ofMesopotamia. One would expect that the most frequently attested Indussign would very often occur next to itself, but this is never the case in theIndus Valley. The combination is however attested on a round Gulf-typeseal coming from the Near East, now in the British Museum (BM120228). This seal contains five frequently occurring Indus signs but inunique sequences (cf. Parpola 1994: Fig. 8.6). This suggests thatHarappan trade agents who resided in the Gulf and in Mesopotamiabecame bilingual and adopted local names, but wrote their foreign namesin the Indus script for the Harappans to read. The cuneiform texts in factspeak not only of a distant country called Meluhha which most scholarsequate with Greater Indus Valley, but also of a village in southernMesopotamia called Meluhha whose inhabitants had purely Sumeriannames.Farmer and his colleagues claim that the Indus script is a system of nonlinguisticsymbols that can be understood in any language. They suggestthat it belongs to the category which Andrew Robinson (2002: 30)proposes to call ―proto-writing‖, and to which he assigns ―Ice Agecave art,Amerindian pictograms, many modern road signs, mathematical andscientific symbols and musical notation‖. The speech-bound scripts or inRobinson‘s terms ―full writing ― came into being with the phonetizationof written symbols by means of the rebus or picture puzzle principle.Let us consider the rebus principle utilized in logo-syllabic scripts. Mostsigns were originally pictures denoting the objects or ideas theyrepresented. But abstract concepts such as ‗life‘ would be difficult toexpress pictorially. Therefore the meaning of a pictogram or ideogramwas extended from the word for the depicted object to comprise all itshomophones. For example, in the Sumerian script the drawing of anarrow meant 'arrow', but in addition 'life' and 'rib', because all three wordswere pronounced alike in the Sumerian language, namely ti. Homophonymust have played a role in folklore long before it was utilized in writing.The pun between the Sumerian words ti 'rib' and ti 'life' figures in theSumerian paradise myth, in which the rib of the sick and dying water godEnki is healed by the Mistress of Life, Nin-ti. But the Biblical myth ofEve's creation out of Adam's rib no more makes sense because theoriginal pun has been lost in translation: ‗rib‘ in Hebrew is Sela:c and has126 Airāvatino connection with Eve's Hebrew name H‘awwa:, which is explained inthe Bible to mean ―mother of all living‖ (Cf. Parpola 1994: 102.) Thepoint is that homophony usually is very language-specific, and rebusestherefore enable language identification and phonetic decipherment.Fig. 3 : Pottery graffiti from the Megalithic site of Sanur in TamilNadu, South India. AfterBanerjee & Soundara Rajan 1959: 32, fig. 8.Since the appearance of my criticism in 2005, Farmer and his colleagueshave underlined that the rebus principle is occasionally used also insymbol systems not so tightly bound to language3. As an example theymention the use of rebus puns to express proper names in the otherwiseParpola, Asko 127clearly non-linguistic communication system of heraldry. But bydefinition any ancient or modern symbol system which consciously usesrebuses and which therefore at least partially can be read phoneticallycounts as full writing.Even short noun phrases and incomplete sentences qualify as full writingif the script uses the rebus principle to phonetize some of its signs. (Cf.Robinson 1995: 12.) Archaic Sumerian is considered a full writing system,because it occasionally uses rebus puns, for instance on a tablet, wherethe single word gi ‗reimburse‘ (expressed by the sign depicting 'reed' = giin Sumerian), constitutes the very incomplete phrase in its owncompartment that constitutes a text unit (cf. Robinson 2002: 26). Even inlater times, the Sumerian script had more logograms than syllabic signs,although with time the number of phonetic signs increased. When thecuneiform script was adapted for writing the Akkadian language, thesystem could be improved upon, and the script became almost fullyphonetic.The Egyptian script around 3100-3000 BC was used in a number of veryshort inscriptions, often consisting of just two signs, which recordedproper names but with a very high percentage of the signs used as rebuses(see e.g. Schott 1951). The famous palette of King Narmer with aninscription already quoted above is a good example. This is definitelyalready a writing system, even if the texts are on average shorter than theIndus texts! Here two rebus signs express the proper name of KingNarmer, whose feats are related in a non-linguistic way in the picturestaking up the rest of the palette, yet with many formalized conventions.This is fully parallel to the use of rebus symbols to express proper namesin the non-linguistic communication system of heraldry or coats of arms.The new thesis helps to understand the Indus Civilization better thanthe writing hypothesisAs to the very last point raised, and claim made, by Farmer and hiscolleagues in their 2004 paper, I honestly cannot understand how thehypothesis that the Indus signs are non-linguistic symbols helps us tounderstand the Indus Civilization much better than the hypothesis that theIndus script is a logo-syllabic writing system. In a logo-syllabic script thesigns may denote what they depict, or they may be used as rebuses.Before we can even start pondering their use as rebuses, we must clear uptheir iconic meaning. This necessary first step is identical with the effortsof Farmer and others to understand the Indus symbols as pictograms.128 AirāvatiAs an example of my own efforts to understand the pictorial shapes of theIndus signs, I would like to mention my interpretation of one particularsign as depicting the palm squirrel (Parpola 1994: 103 with fig. 7.1): thesign clearly represents an animal head downwards, tail raised up and fourlegs attached to a vertical stroke representing tree trunk. The palmsquirrel spends long times in this pose, wherefore it is called in Sanskrit‗tree-sleeper‘. In seal texts, the sign is more likely to have been used as arebus rather than in its iconic meaning (for my interpretation see Parpola1994: 229-230). Could the non-linguistic approach of Farmer and hiscolleagues offer a better explanation for the meaning of this sign?ReferencesBanerjee, N. R., and Soundara Rajan, K. V.1959. Sanur 1950 & 1952: A Megalithic site in DistrictChingleput. Ancient India 15: 4-42.Black, Jeremy, and Green, Anthony1992. Gods, demons and symbols of ancient Mesopotamia: Anillustrated dictionary. Illustrations by Tessa Rickards. London:The British Museum Press.Boehmer, R. M.1975. Das Auftreten des Wasserbüffels in Mesopotamien inhistorischer Zeit und seine sumerische Benennung. Zeitschriftfür Assyriologie un Vorderasiatische Archäologie 64: 1-19.CISI = Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions.1987. Vol. 1: Collections in India, edited by Jagat Pati Joshi andAsko Parpola1991. Vol. 2: Collections in Pakistan, edited by Sayid GhulamMustafa Shah and Asko Parpola.2008. Vol. 3: New material, untraced objects, and collectionsoutside India and Pakistan. Edited by Asko Parpola, B. M. Pandeand Petteri Koskikallio. Part 1: Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, incollaboration with Richard H. Meadow and Jonathan MarkKenoyer. (Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, B 239-241.) Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia.Dales, George F., Jr.,1967. South Asia's earliest writing - still undeciphered.Expedition 9 (2): 30-37.Parpola, Asko 129Edzard, Dietz Otto,1968. Die Inschriften der altakkadischen Rollsiegel. Archiv fürOrientforschung 22: 12-20.Farmer, Steve, Richard Sproat & Michael Witzel2004. The collapse of the Indus script thesis: The myth of aliterate Harappan Civilization. Electronic Journal of VedicStudies 11 (2): 19-57.Gardiner, Alan1957. Egyptian grammar, being an introduction to the study ofhieroglyphs. Third edition. London: Oxford University Press,Kharakwal, J. S., Y. S. Rawat and Toshiki Osada2007. Kanmer: A Harappan site in Kachchh, Gujarat, India. Pp.21-137 in: Toshiki Osada (Ed.), Linguistics, archaeology and thehuman past. (Occasional paper 2.) Kyoto: Indus Project,Research Institute for Humanity and Nature.Konishi, Masatoshi1987. Writing materials during the Harappan period. Pp. 213-217 in: B.M. Pande & B.D. Chattopadhyaya (eds.), Archaeologyand History: Essays in memory of Shri A. Ghosh. Delhi: AgamKala Prakashan.Lal, B.B.2002. The Sarasvati flows on: The continuity of Indian culture.New Delhi: Aryan Books International.Mackay, E.J.H.1938. Further excavations at Mohenjo-daro, I-II. Delhi:Manager of Publications, Government of India.Mahadevan, Iravatham1977. The Indus script: Texts, concordance and tables.(Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, 77.) NewDelhi: Archaeological Survey of India.Marshall, John (Ed.)1931. Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization, I-III. London:Arthur Probsthain.130 AirāvatiPossehl, Gregory L.2002. The Indus Civilization: A contemporary perspective.Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press.Parpola, Asko1994. Deciphering the Indus script. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.2005. Study of the Indus script. Transactions of the InternationalConference of Eastern Studies 50: 28-66.Robinson, Andrew1995. The story of writing. London: Thames and Hudson.2002. Lost languages: The enigma of the world‘s undecipheredscripts. New York: McGraw Hill.Salomon, Richard1998. Indian epigraphy. New York: Oxford University Press.Schott, Siegfried1951. Hieroglyphen: Untersuchungen zum Ursprung der Schrift.(Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur [in Mainz],Abhandlungen der Geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse,Jahrgang 1950, Nr. 24.) Mainz: Verlag der Akademie derWissenschaften und der Literatur.Shivaganesha Murthy, R. S.1996. Introduction to Manuscriptology. Delhi: SharadaPublishing House.Vidale, Massimo2007. The collapse melts down: A reply to Farmer, Sproat &Witzel. East and West 57 (1-4): 333-366.Parpola, Asko 131Notes1 This paper was written for, and presented at, the workshop on ―Scripts,non-scripts and (pseudo-)decipherment‖ organized by Richard Sproat andSteve Farmer at the Linguistic Society of America's Linguistics Instituteon the 11th of July 2007 at Stanford University(http://serrano.ai.uiuc.edu/2007Workshop/). It was also read as a publiclecture at the Roja Muthiah Research Library, Chennai, on the 16th ofFebruary 2008. I thank the organizers of both events for this opportunityto participate in the debate on the nature of the Indus script, and am gladto publish the paper in honour of my old friend Iravatham Mahadevan, agreat epigraphist.2 The Indus texts are cited in this paper with their labels in the CISI (seereferences).3 From the abstracts of the Stanford workshop papers(http://serrano.ai.uiuc.edu/2007Workshop/abstracts.html), I got theimpression that at least one of the three authors wants to back out fromtheir original thesis and change it into something else. While Farmerrepeats the claim that ―the so-called Indus script was not a speechencodingor writing system in the strict linguistic sense, as has beenassumed‖, Witzel writes as if he and his colleagues had only claimed thatthe Indus script does not SYSTEMATICALLY encode language in thesense that ―Indus signs do not encode FULL phrases or sentences‖(myemphasis, AP). Witzel also admits that ―Indus symbols... may... containoccasional puns‖ Or maybe, when speaking of recent studies whichsuggest this, he is referring to me, since these have been my veryassumptions, namely that the Indus seals hardly contain completesentences and that they contain puns. In any case, I am happy if Witzelhas changed his previously more radical view and now agrees with me.When I mentioned these impressions of mine at the Stanford workshop,Michael Witzel assured me that he was not backing out from the originalclaim but continues to maintain that the Indus script does not encodelanguage.

Damn I was going to buy a new Hummer in late 2012 and drive around the country for a vacation, Now I am going to have to shave my head and join the Hari.s, Muslims, Jews, Jehovah s, Mormons, Christians, and a few other wing nut groups just to cover all my bases.[url=http://2012earth.net/stop_frighten.html]2012 end of world [/url] - some truth about 2012

I am publishing my sixth research paper directly online as it is an extension of my previous papers. Kindly read pages 4 to 18 as it contains a detailed discussion of the term ‘Aryan’. This paper shows why the Dravidian, Vedic and Paramunda Indus theories are not tenable.

Methods to reconstruct the languages of the Harappans were presented in the present and previous papers. We hope other scholars take up the exercise of reconstructing the languages of the Indus Valley civilization!

The older papers were written taking the assumptions of the 19th century school of Indology as a base and working backwards. These may appear to be outdated now (at the end of our very long journey). However, the fundamentals are still correct.

Part one

http://www.scribd.com/doc/27103044/Sujay-NPAP-Part-One

Part Two very,very important!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/27105677/Sujay-Npap-Part-Two

(These comprise the complete and comprehensive solution to the Aryan problem)

Literacy in pre-Buddhist India (before 600 BC)

Literacy in pre-Buddhist India (before 600 BC)

Please find my collection of papers on literacy in Pre-Buddhist India

Before mature phase of Indus valley civilization (before 2600 BC)

- There are some potters marks but none qualify as full writing

Indus valley civilization (2600 BC to 1900 BC)

1. The reconfirmation and reinforcement of the Indus script thesis (very logical and self explanatory paper)

1. Literacy in post-Harappan india (obviously literacy in post-Harappan India existed in certain pockets & were limited to very small sections of society- alphabetic scripts were brought from West Asia and the Indus script also continued – this a very logical and self-explanatory paper and anyone can cross-verify the conclusions)